


What I Miss?

by ThePandoricaWillOpen



Series: Alternative Lives, Infinite Possibilities [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, First Meetings, M/M, One Shot, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-29
Updated: 2016-09-29
Packaged: 2018-08-18 06:14:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8151928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePandoricaWillOpen/pseuds/ThePandoricaWillOpen
Summary: Prompt: Steve is sitting in class when a student comes in and slams into the seat next to him. After a beat, the student leans over and asks, “What I miss?” Steve turns to tell the jerk to be quiet when he’s met with a pair of blue eyes and an impossible jawline. College!AU





	

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt #9 - college AU one!shot with pre-serum (hella dramatic) Steve. Not Beta'd. Enjoy.

Steve is a good student, he attends every class, goes to study group, he even answers a few questions now and then (even if his entire body shakes for a few hours afterwards). He pays attention in class, always taking notes in illegible handwriting that only he can read, and he's never ever late. Unlike the guy who decided to come in thirty minutes into the lecture.

Usually Steve sits in the front of the class where he can be free from distractions, free from the light that trickles in when the back doors open to let in latecomers. Today, however, he was right in the back of the lecture hall right by the doors. A group of students had come in early in order to talk to Professor Pierce and had taken up Steve’s usual seat. There was a sort of silent agreement between all the pupils that the first seat you took on the first week of class was your seat for the rest of the semester. It was just how things were done, except today. 

Steve wasn’t a jerkwad like the students who decided to stay in the seats in the front instead of the ones they usually sat at in the back and that left Steve with no other option that to sit in the back row, the farthest possible, which also made it nearly impossible for Steve to ask questions and to properly see the slides on the projecting screen. Steve would have to stay after class or go to Pierce’s office hours in order to copy down the material properly since the professor refused to have anything to do with college’s online classroom website. He was an old fashion teacher, he had told the class three weeks ago at the beginning of the semester, and computers made students lazy so everything (except final papers) had to be handwritten. He didn’t allow computers in the hall, phones were only allowed because he couldn’t keep an eye on fifty students at one time. His TA, Brock, did have instructions to kick people out if he saw them on their phones but he mostly spent the class period on his own phone in the back. 

The fact that Steve wore a hearing aid meant that he struggled when Pierce walked off the podium and away from the mic going off on some tangent about how proper art was about technique rather than style. Steve looked at his art book, trying to catch up to the texts he saw on the screen and take notes on the text rather than what the professor was doing. It wasn’t favourable since Pierce tended to write exams based on his lectures and not the book that was assigned but for now it would have to do.

They had moved on to talking about composition of pre-renaissance art versus renaissance art when the door to Steve’s left opened. Steve closed his eyes as the light hit the white paper of his notebook and reflected back at him in the relatively dark room. This was why he didn’t sit in the back row!

The latecomer doesn’t seen disturbed to have come in right in the middle of the lecture. He didn’t even pull the door close, he just left it to bang loudly behind him as he made his way to the nearest available seat which, god help him, was right next to Steve. 

Steve didn’t look up, apart from the mere glance as the door opened and the flinch he held back at the intrusion of the light, as the guy sat down loudly behind him, chair scraping on the floor and book bag hitting the tabletop with a loud  _ thump _ . He was about to flip the page, scrambling to catch up to the point in the lecture that Pierce was in (which was hard since he had his own structure that was different from the structured laid out in the textbook - sometimes the painting they were looking at was in the chapter they had been assigned, sometimes it was chapters ahead) when the guy leaned over.

“Hey, what I miss?” he whispered. 

Steve could smell the heavy scent of coffee from his breath, a little bit of mint like he was trying to cover it up and had completely failed. Hunched over his textbook, Steve almost looked like he was sleeping if you looked at him from far away (Sam always teased him about the way he positioned his notebook relative to the way he wrote and said that the weird placement was why his writing was so off), it took him a second to realise the guy’s face was very near his own if only he turned to the side to face him. 

He sat back, the guy moving away at the same time, and turned to look at him with a scowl that never happened because holy shit this guy’s cheekbones where straight out of an artist's wet dream! Or at least this artist's wet dream. Steve stared a little more than was necessary, enough that the guy glanced down at the front of the lecture hall and back at him with a worried look on his perfect face. His eyebrows scrunched up like he was deciding whether or not to get the attention of a more adultier adult in the vicinity. Steve swallowed and pushed him notebook towards the guy without a word. He looked down at it and then at Steve and then (just fucking kill him now!) gave a wide toothy smile. 

Now, Steve knows that the chance of his getting a heart attack were pretty high-up there considering the amount of things his body dealt with on a day-to-day basis but was it possible that his heart would just stop even when his brain was still repeating  _ oh my god oh my god oh MY GOD _ loudly in his head? Was that a thing?

The guy didn’t seem to know what to do with Steve’s lack of reaction so he turned to his backpack, opening it and taking out a notebook and a pen. Steve followed the movement, his body wouldn’t move beyond his eyeballs it seemed, and saw two thick textbooks inside the bag. 

“Pre-Med?” he asks before he can stop himself. 

The guy continued to flip through his notebook until he reached to a clean page before turning to Steve and saying, “yup. It’s why I’m late, my class ends ten minutes into the start of this one and it’s way across campus. Takes me awhile to get here lugging all these books around.”

“Ah,” Steve replies. 

The guy turns back to Steve’s notebook, copying down in a neat curling writing what Steve had written. It surprised Steve that he could read his chicken scratch - a feat that not even his mother was able to do. He turned back to the lecture, watching as Pierce turned to another slide and flinching when he realised they were now talking about the late renaissance period. He missed a good chunk of the lecture from just staring at his fellow student (though those cheekbones and that jawline  _ were _ a good excuse not to pay attention to class, not that Pierce would agree). 

He was stuck between staring at the guy and his god awful totally distracting and unusually sharp jawline or trying to catch up to the lecture somehow. He couldn’t take notes, the guy still had his notebook and looked to be about a third of the way through it. It would probably take a few more minutes before he would be able to decipher the notes towards the center since that’s when Steve started to rant about Pierce’s skipping around. Truly, Steve’s notes were a work of art complete with doodles, random commentary along the sides and arrows pointing everywhere. Steve could make sense of it easily and the guy seemed to understand it enough to copy it down. 

Steve looked down at his textbook, flipping to the beginning of the chapter, figuring he might as well read the entire thing before heading to Pierce’s office hours just in case the professor asked him anything. 

It was silent for a while, Steve only glancing to his right enough to notice that the guy’s hair was falling over his face, strands slipping out of the hair tie tie as he leaned his head this way and that copying the assignment and nodding to himself once in awhile. He might have also noticed how the guy was wearing a red plaid shirt not buttoned all the way with a white shirt underneath. There was a faded jean jacket hanging over the back of his chair with patches at the elbows and back. It looked worn, homey, and it would probably fall off Steve’s shoulders if he tried it on. 

He wondered if the cigarette smell was coming from him or someone down the row. He wondered if he smelled like sweat from running across campus or if he smelled like cologne or something woodsy. What kind of coffee did he like? Did he have a sweet tooth or was he a heathen who drank his coffee black? Would the two day old stubble feel rough or smooth under Steve’s fingers? Was his hair soft, smooth, thick or thin? Would his fingers glide through his hair or catch on tiny knots? Would he moan if Steve pulled his hair back before ravaging his-

“Thanks, dude,” the guy says, interrupting Steve’s staring, passing back his notebook. He leans towards Steve and holds out his hand. “Names James Barnes. But you can call me Bucky.”

“Steve. Steve Rogers,” he replies once his brain catches up, shaking Bucky’s hand for far longer than necessary. Bucky doesn’t seem to mind, his lips quirking up even more. Steve let’s go after a while and he takes the notebook, blushing a deep red that he hopes isn’t visible in the poor light, turning away from Bucky.

“You saved my life, pal,” Bucky whispers, moving his chair closer to Steve. 

Steve doesn’t blush harder, nope, it does not happen. Except it does. He’s officially hit the deep red of a tomato, his ears burning. His heart is beating in his chest, from nerves or excitement or something else, he’s not sure, but it’s there, beating fast and, again, and he wonders if he’s going to have a heart attack. His lack of response, other than turning his head to look at him, doesn’t deter Bucky at all. In fact, he’s back to a toothy grin almost like the jerk is enjoying seeing Steve like this. 

The hot bastard probably is, Steve thinks, he probably likes to watch people become putty in his hands. Well, not me pal.

He takes a deep breath and tries to channel his inner Tony Stark, trying to look cool and collected and probably failing at it. He takes a deep breath and asks,  “How about lunch?”

Bucky’s eyes wrinkle at the sides when he chuckles, looking down at the floor. There’s a light blush creeping over his perfect cheekbones, the ones that Steve is going to sketch the hell out of once he gets home. The chuckle is a breathy sound but it’s enough to make every bone in Steve’s turn to dust. That’s it, this is how he dies. In an art history elective class taught by a hardass, anti-technology professor who liked to talk about the masters as if he knew them personally. Well, rest in peace Steven Grant Rogers. Hopefully Clint will water his plants when he doesn’t make it home because he’s too busy mummifying in the lecture hall of the art building.

“How about an early dinner instead?” Bucky counters after a while, completely unaware of the eulogy Steve was about to compose in his head. “Maybe around four? And a movie afterwards?”

“Y-yeah,” Steve replies, losing all the air of confidence from earlier.

"Great," Bucky says. He pulls Steve's notebook back towards him and writes something on the top right corner before handing it back. It's his phone number, complete with a cute smily face and his curling handwriting. "Meet you at the quad?"

"Y-yeah," Steve repeats. ( _Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to pay our respects to Steve Rogers who died from overexposure from a jawline so lickable that it should have had it own FDA warning label...)_

"Can't wait, Stevie."

Well, he could _probably_ make it a few more hours… 


End file.
